The Cowboy and His Gal
by Iscreamer1
Summary: A Toy Story take on the classic story of The Mouse and His Child. Also features additional Pixar characters, may be OOC. *on hiatus*
1. The Toy Shop

**Author's note: The majority of this story is based on the 1977 animated film The Mouse and His Child and not upon the original novel by Russell Hoban or any other adaptation.**

* * *

It was late one fall in the Twin Cities of Minnesota and the air had quite a breeze. In a more reputable part of the neighborhood, sat a toy shop with it's light glowing into the oncoming night. The proprietor of the store, a ginger haired woman in a brown wool coat, was met by a blond-haired woman much younger than her and her ten-year-old son Andy, who loved toys just as much as anyone else. His eyes were caught by a pair of dolls that looked like they came the old west, both of them wearing cow print vests, red floppy hats, brown boots, white shirts and long blue jeans. Woody and Jessie were their names and it looked like they were dancing.

"I want those two," he said, pointing his left index finger to the cowboy and cowgirl.

"Not tonight, dear," said his mother, having spent most of her savings on dinner from a high-cost restaurant to which they had previously been to. "It's getting late. If they are still here tomorrow, we can look."

Satisfied with his mother's response, Andy gave a parting wave of his left hand to the ginger haired woman and the trio left in opposite directions.

Inside the store, though appearing to be cramped given how many toys were stocked on the shelves, held a menagerie of toy elephants, seals, Barbie and Ken dolls and perhaps even the creepiest little clown you ever saw. There were also miniature race cars, monster dolls, stuffed dinosaurs, a yellow ball with a red star and blue stripes and even toy clown fishes. RC trains, planes and boats were locked in glass cases and some vintage toys like a slinky dog and a potato head were on a shelf next to a white and red phone with a painted smile on it's lips.

It was the midnight hour known by wiccans as the witching hour and an ancient power that breathed pure life into the bodies of these toys came to pass when a clock whose hour and minute hands looked like a moustache gave the all clear signal in a voice that sounded like the general impression of Father Time.

"Midnight…."

Rubber ducks quacked, dolls squeaked and the wind up band marched as they played their instruments to and fro on the shelves. Barbie and Ken moved by an inch, then a meter and in a minute their limbs were completely expendable. Ken wolf-whistled as his girlfriend twirled around in her pretty pink tutu on light feet, then he looked out of his dollhouse window to see a jack-in-the-box wearing a green nightcap popping out. Jack leered over the cowboy dolls, who were looking around at the strange and beautiful sights that looked so foreign to them.

"Woody?" asked the cowgirl.

The cowboy, equally confused as her, replied in a tiny voice that went deep as it fully emerged from the silence.

"Yes, Jessie?"

"Where are we?"

"I don't know."

"What are we?"

"I don't know that either. We must wait and see."

Woody's eyes turned to a porcelain figure wearing a pale pink bonnet with matching sleeves and a silvery blue corset. She also wore a white skirt with pink polka dots and carried a baby blue shepherd's staff in her right hand. She walked five steps closer to the Woody and Jessie and spoke in a gorgeous southern accent.

"I can explain that."

She stopped in front of them, giving the dolls a once over, her eyes peering up and down.

"You must have been recently manufactured. I should know because I have experience it once and I have been here for over fifty years. I am Bo Peep, the leader and the wisest of all the toys in this store."

Jessie did a small courtesy.

"Well, begging your pardon, mam. I have never so someone so beautiful like you before."

Bo smiled.

"That is because I am the first person you see me as. To answer your question, in case you have not heard, you are cowboy and cowgirl dolls and I think you are rather attractive."

Woody tried to process the new information into his head.

"So what you are saying is, this is a toy shop and we are…toys?"

"Welcome wagon!" came a pair of voices from above.

The voices, belonging to Ken and Barbie, came rushing down the stairs and pushing the dollhouse doors open with tiny streams of confetti blasting out of a cannon placed in between them. Barbie went first to introduce herself, pointing both index fingers to the other toys she could see.

"Hello, I'm Barbie, this my boyfriend Ken, that's Mr. Potato Head, that's Rex, I see you have already met Bo Peep, there's Slinky and that over there is Jack."

"You'll get used to being here sooner or later," the dog called Slinky said, circling around them like a snake. "Because at some point, you two will be finding a new home with someone who loves you."

"And that someone is likely to be a little boy or girl who can treat you well," the phone with painted lips rolled up to them on his four blue wheels.

"Everybody gets bought?" Jessie asked in astonishment.

"Yes," the green T-Rex simply named Rex answered. "Anything that goes, goes out the door. Everything must go, including you two."

"The only reason I have been here," Bo Peep went on to explain. "Is because I am a decoration, a trademark to what this store represents."

She stood proudly, her eyes closed as she stood before the window. Her arms were raised, widespread as far as they could go. To the other toys, she looked like a martyr, a heavenly martyr who brought joy and peace to the hearts of children by channeling it through the toys she advised and kept watch over like a flock of sheep. Then at the very moment her eyes opened, another pair of eyes were staring back at her. Bo did not scream, but she did falter at the beady eyes, the little pink nose, the bony tail and big ears belonging to a blue furred rat that observed her in the mannerisms of a pedophile. It left behind three claws marks on its right hand on the window, mimicking the sound of wooden sleigh screeching on ice. After twenty seconds of eyes staring at them all, the rat left, his experience having left Jessie traumatized. She gulped.

"I think we'll stay here."

"You have no choice," Rex shook his head sadly. "The chance you'll get of staying here is if a child doesn't hack you up into little pieces."

Bo slammed her staff down.

"This is a G-rated toy store. That means no sex, no booze, no profanity and _no_ violence."

Her tone was harsh and firm and fit for a superior of her own statute. Her word was law, and the toys had great respect for her.

"I was going to say they could come back to be repaired," Rex reasoned.

Then Jessie thought of an idea that had come to her head in an instant without even having to know about it first.

"What if we could be a family?"

This stymied the rest of the toys. It took them ten seconds to move again after they had just heard her words.

"A family?!" they all cried.

"Sure," Jessie smiled. "Then we can all stay together."

"Sorry," the moustache clock said down to them. "But you must do what you are meant to do, not what you want to do."

The sight of a passing man who seemed homeless brought the toys back into a clockwork mode, or at least tried to act like clockwork toys in order to get a good impression on their human owners and bypassers as well as visitors who came to the store. At most times they just stood still like they were meant to do, but this time it was a quick action that needed to be taken into consideration. They wanted to be viewed what people want to see them as, even it caused such a controversy given the robotic manner they were walking.

The band started to play and Woody and Jessie found themselves dancing the tango while their fellow toys did their own style of automatonlike ambulatory. Rex stomped, Mr. Potato Head did the robot, Barbie and Ken held hands, and Bo was twirling like a ballerina, something she had learned from Barbie and couple of other ballerina dolls during her spare time. They were going around in circles, wary of Rex swinging his tail back and forth as Woody began to notice that Jessie seemed to be…hyperventilating.

"Woody, I don't wanna go into the outside world. It feels too strange!"

Try as he might to stop himself from dancing a small foxtrot with their hands locked together, Woody and Jessie could not stop until the man was out of sight. The same went for the other toys. The shop that bore their newfound surroundings were spinning out of synchronization with their own twirling. Jessie, continuing to cry, "I don't wanna leave!", seemed grow louder than the music which intensified the dancing and just when Woody tried to console his girlfriend, his right foot was hanging over the edge of the front shelf. It was too late to reverse himself or for any of the other toys to pull him back once Woody had discovered that Jessie was pulling him down, down five feet to the floor. There was clatter made from the impact and Woody found that his hat was lying three inches away from him. His right hand reached for it, but only thing he got as far as were his fingertips. It was apparent that the pain he felt coursing through his limbs were his joints discombobulated. Bo Peep and the other rushed over to the edge and called down with cupped hands.

"Are you okay?"

What they heard next was an all too familiar reply.

"We've fallen! And we can't get up!"


	2. The Rat

Andy was very upset when he and his mother came back to the toy shop the following morning to discover that Woody and Jessie were gone. His mother had given him a brown horse toy called Bullseye instead that had joints held together by strings, almost like a marionette. The owner of the store who found the cowboy and girl lying there on the floor had already inspected the damage and knew that the dolls' joints were dislocated beyond her own repairs. As complete repairs (at over 300 bucks) were beyond her total bank account, too expensive in layman's terms, she simply decided to throw them out and wait until she had enough money to buy a set of replacements.

When Jessie and Woody went into "alive mode", only a crescent of light could be seen, revealing that were standing in over four feet of ripped papers

"Woody?"

"Yes, Jessie?"

"Please don't tell me this is world. IF it is, it looks small, crowded and disgusting."

Her views of the world outside from the shop window were not very good the previous night, considering she had been more focused on other things in her mind. Then suddenly, the can started to lift and the trash rained down into an even larger looking tank that had the shape of a cylinder. It closed, bringing the dolls back into darkness and the tank quickly tilted, going up by ninety degrees where it stopped and brought back the light, only for the garbage to fall into a small ocean of rubbish. Woody and Jessie landed near an empty tomato can, her head peering into it. The world around them began to move, slowly as it went through some small bounces on the road ahead.

"If this is the world," Woody admitted to Jessie. "I hope it isn't."

The doll's hands remained locked for the entire journey, afraid of being separate in this sea of refuse that bounced and jolted with the way it scattered the litter. A waste of cans, lint, open boxes, plastic, broken china and other sorts of flotsam and jetsam swept over them, turning into a waterfall that carried them off into a deep pit, met by a brown dog sleeping under a discarded '59 Chevy. The dog named Dug, sniffed the dolls and barked three times for his master, who had come to be a man in a battered grey suit with a matching fedora. He picked the dolls up in his left hand and studied them. The man named Al, whose facial appearance was a scruffy as his clothes, smiled, feeling like a child again.

"You know," he said to Dug, sitting down on the doorless front seat of the Chevy. "Mother always wanted me to be a cowboy in one of those rodeo shows. Thought it would give me some exercise…"

He observed his obese body, though not as large as the fattest gentleman found in a country club.

"But, regrettably, I was lazy and I didn't think there was any time for me to be galloping on horses and throwing those lassos around."

He held the two dolls in his hands and brought their feet to the ground, making as appear as if they were trampling through the mud on a quest to find a gold located somewhere in the hills of the long gone old west. Woody and Jessie were not equipped with guns, given a decree on gun control for toys, so all they had were fists for defense. Dug even acted as an impromptu tunnel for the dolls, serving as a gateway into the mines, where they would find an old prospector and save him from a threatening case of dynamite sticks that were about to blow up…unless if the cave filled with water of course.

After two long minutes, Al went to look for food and Dug followed, giving the dolls an opportunity to make their way back to the store.

"You know," Jessie said to Woody as they got up. "Imaging myself trying to save a prospector from a mine about to be blown up made me feel like a real cowgirl."

Woody, looking for a northern direction out of the dump with his hands placed on his hips, could only roll his eyes. He felt embarrassed at being manipulated, even though he was a toy.

"I only wish I had a horse for that experience."

They soon passed a frozen grill, it's top covered with snow. Jessie sighed at the sad state of the trash, decaying in a landfill of despair. Had she not danced with her partner so much in front of that by passer, they would not have had to leave the shop.

"I guess it's my fault that were out in this world."

Woody, leading her, stopped and turned counterclockwise.

"Well, it had to happen sometime, Jessie. I mean, you heard what Little Miss Peep said."

"I know," fear was starting to overtake her. "I just hope we won't be walking in circles."

They passed a trio of old boots that were covered by frost and the remains of a wooden fence that took on a menacing appearance of the most unimaginable creature ever seen, but Jessie kept her courage.

"I'm not afraid of anything that will come my way."

A black lady's shoe knew that the time had come to fall from a dislocated section of a septic tank, nearing shocking all of the nerves in her body.

"Except that."

The steel wire fence that separated the junkyard from a railroad line lay beyond a sink, a green '46 Ford, a network of pipes, cigar boxes and a large arachnid sized glove among other things. Woody could only imagine the best for the both of them, being an optimist that he was.

"I'm sure something good will come out of all of this."

His voice quivered upon seeing a familiar looking creature, with blue fur and a pink nose, it was the rat from before and he jumped in front of the dolls like a bum asking for money.

"I'm afraid it won't, not this evening at least, for I am your host…Remy Flounders."

His right hand pulled on his three right whiskers and his left hand did a gentlemanly bow. Woody tipped his hat in reciprocation.

"How do you do? I'm Woody, this is Jessie."

"I'm what you would call his girlfriend," she smiled.

The rumble of the earth brought her back into a frown, soon revealing itself to be a large tractor crane that was passing by. It was close enough to run all three of them over with its right caterpillar tracks, but surprisingly it simply passed the rat and doll by one small inch as they moved slowly away from it, fearful of the alarming size. Remy chuckled at the experience, practically laughing in the face of death.

"Any closer and you would have been flattened."

Jessie sighed in relief.

"Thank you, Remy."

"Any time, miss. You and your hubby are just as charming as a…curvy female mouse."

The dolls smiled pathetically at Remy's joke. The rat chuckled for a bit then his laughter stifled down as he explained again.

"Perhaps it would be more appropriate if we could get to know each other more…someplace else?"

Woody looked at Jessie, whose eyes trusted the stranger like they had already known him.

"I think we will."

Whispering to Jessie, he added.

"Maybe he can take us home."

"I had just the very place in mind!" Remy said, ignorant of their words. "We can get to know each other more…"

He pointed his right index finger to the west.

"….over there."

What lay there, was a makeshift bar that was big enough for Woody and Jessie to fit all the way to the ceiling. The exterior was crooked grandfather clock made of oak wood which was lying twenty degrees to the left. The saloon like doors lay at the bottom, in the center of the feet and they just about Woody's size…or at least his head he and Jessie tried to fit through. Woody watched Remy as they walked, keeping his eyes on him. He was certain that there was more to the rat than what he had seen, to be uncovered by and by.

After failing to get his head through the door, Remy went in first, greeted by old friends and relatives who frequently occupied the pub and even lived there. He went to the countertop table where his brown-furred brother Emilie ran as bartender. His father was expert at the piano, playing "Have A Party At the Ball", watching a couple dancing to the swing.

"Good evening," Remy said to the couple as he reached the bar.

Some rats close to the dancing couple were playing pinball on the said machine, getting drunk off of pints every time they scored a goal.

"Want some cabbage cheese with the juice?" Emilie asked his brother.

"I suppose, do you have any treacle to go with it?"

Emilie check the cupboards under the table on his side from left to right, there was none that he could see.

"Sorry, Remy, that stuff is hard to come by. But they do have some of it over at the trust company."

Remy smiled.

"I'll see to that."

As Emilie got Remy his drink of orange juice, Woody and Jessie, both agreeing that they were much too large to fit through the door, decided to find another way and when Woody was looking over his right shoulder, he could see an obese grasshopper heading to them. The grasshopper walked to the back of the clock, spotting the dolls. His fat lips curled into a smile as he held his hands together, approaching the dolls with big, beady eyes.

"Tell me, do you believe in fate? Trifled by destiny?"

He pulled out a blue cape with white stars from his wings.

"Then you have come to the right place. Perhaps I can lift the veil that unveils your future. I will show you the path to follow."

Thus he spoke as he waved his cape around. Then he spotted Remy, looking displeased with the way his fists were on his hips.

"Hello, Remy."

"Hey, Molt. How much will it be tonight?"

"One beetle."

Remy looked unimpressed.

"Just one beetle?"

He chuckled, and thinking that it was nothing more but a joke, Molt smiled. But he didn't smile when Remy's right hand grabbed him by the throat and shouted.

"Molt, you're out."

"For being a faker?"

"For failing to be a faker."

Woody, out of curiosity asked.

"How long have you known?"

"Since we have met," Remy replied. "But I swear that this guy is a total retard."

Molt's lips began to pout and he almost cried when Remy led the dolls away.

"I'm sorry you had to see that. Since it's getting late, how about I take you to my home, it's a little away from here, but not too far."

Passing over a wooden board that spanned a small chasm to a steel cookie tin labelled "Casey Jr's. Cookies". Like the grandfather clock, it was titled five degrees to the left and the doors were slightly larger, almost enough for Woody and Jessie to fit through without any effort. Inside, with wooden walls and a fire from a small white marble fireplace providing heat for the room. Remy sat down on his bed made from goose-down cotton, a bunny slipper providing the bed frame.

"A bit modest, I know, but Abraham Lincoln started out in a log cabin as well."

Woody and Jessie took up most of the room, sitting down in opposite corners: Woody on the right, Jessie on the left. They felt uncomfortable with their heads reaching the ceiling as Remy explained his own set of plans for his future.

"I was thinking of building an empire, worthy of belonging to the rat with the sharpest teeth in the dump and it will soon be mine."

To Woody, Remy's tone was diabolical and wicked. So he asked.

"What do you plan to do with us?"

Remy smiled deviously.

"I'm going to put you to work. Building an empire for rodents can be hard work when being required the additional labor of other toys who have been forgotten and discarded by their owners."

A long line of toys, including a devil doll, a nutcracker soldier, a Raggedy Ann who looked worn out, a purple octopus with arms that were stretched out, a clown that had a mouth that was depressed and an RC car pulling a cart of cracked lollipops. They were all miserable, mining their way into a tunnel that would lead the sewers and it was apparent that age and time had not been kind to the toys, nor was a scrawny brown rat, who in the true fashion of an overseer, used a tiny black whip to get the toys back to work. Woody found this hard to believe beyond his eyes.

"This is just too cruel."

"So you have noticed."

He clapped his hands twice, summoning the scrawny rat with the whip who came to his aide.

"Goodman, show these dolls to the factory tomorrow morning."

The scrawny rat named Goodman turned to the dolls, who gulped. Who knew what fate lay in store for them, whether it be good or bad.


	3. The Grasshopper

The next morning, Goodman took Woody and Jessie to the direction of the factory. An exceedingly peculiar part of the journey was how dim-witted Goodman seemed to be, trying to remember Remy's instructions.

"You're supposed to take us to the manager," Jessie reminded him after the third time. "Not the building."

"He can't help it, Jessie," Woody reasoned. "He'll make us thieves out of us sooner or later."

As Goodman struggled with his memory of Remy's instructions, he did not notice that Woody and Jessie had disappeared. He was soon frightened by the footsteps of something much smaller than him.

"Who is that?"

The footsteps belonged to Molt, still wearing his blue cape of white stars.

"Oh it's you."

"Yes," Molt nodded. "And I don't suppose you would want to see your fortune, would you?"

'Not today. Besides, I already know you're a phony."

Then he noticed Woody and Jessie escaping. They were about four feet away from him by the time his legs gathered their strength and ran after the duo.

"Hey, you two come back here!"

Both the grasshopper and the rat caught up with them.

"So we meet again," said Molt. "Perhaps I can get a second chance at reading your fortune by reading your hand. Who wants to go first?"

Jessie held out her left hand and Molt examined it.

"A praying mantis would tell me if the person in question had a long or short life-life through their veins, but I can't make out if your length is short or long."

Goodman thought that this was getting nowhere, but he decided to play along with it.

"Suit yourself, I need some time to think."

As Goodman went to sit down five feet away from the dolls, Molt paced back and forth, trying to muster up his hopes of searching for the duo's future.

"Now where were we? Oh, yes. Ahem, the future can be anything you like."

"Anything?"

Jessie pondered the thought, her mind going back to all of the toys becoming one big happy family.

"I want Bo Peep to be my mother and Rex to be my older brother. I would also like to see Mr. Potato Head as my uncle…and the rest of us can all live together in the toy store."

Woody was stupefied by his girlfriend's words. They were not even related by blood or their case, company/manufacturer.

"I think that's a pretty tall order," Molt chuckled. "And what would you like, Mr. Cowboy?"

"It's Woody and I don't think I'd want anything, thank you very much."

"Oh, well then, perhaps I can see what fate has in store for you."'

His wings opened to reveal a ten-piece string of paper clips, setting it on the ground in a rumpled mess.

"Now the two of you step over it."

Woody and Jessie had to be quick, Goodman's memory was coming back at a rapid pace and they had to ensure that their fate was sealed for the better of them. Holding hands, Jessie walked backwards, pushing the chain caught in the rear of her right boot while Woody's left boot caught a piece. They had been walking without even noticing the chain changing shape. Once their boots were free of the clips, Molt inspected the shape.

"Strange, I have never seen it become a circle before."

Then suddenly a flash of lightning lit up the morning sky, which frightened his audience and a spotlight represented by the sun came upon Molt, bathing him in the light of the lord. The grasshopper seemed…hypnotized.

"The road is long….very hard. Bitter winter…shattering spring. A winding road to scattering, a broken path to re-gathering…the enemy you flee at the beginning awaits you at the end."

Then he fell on his legs, closing his eyes. Woody was confused.

"What does it all mean?"

"I'm am not so sure about their either," Goodman said standing up. "Now let's go, we have work to do."

An epiphany soon came across Molt as the three were out of his field of vision, but the vision that he was now thinking of was a prophecy that spoke of an ominous fortune for the two dolls.

"IT WORKED! I CAN SEE THE FUTURE! I SPOKE THE TRUTH!"

He was practically screaming to the world about his breakthrough in his talent. He hopped and flew away, willing to tell some of his other friends in much quieter tones.

"Now let's see…" Goodman said to himself by an old tree. "I go to the…what was it again."

Woody and Jessie decided to use the rat's limited intelligence to their advantage.

"I don't remember either," Jessie shook her head, mustering up a silly smile.

"Me neither," added Woody.

But Goodman somehow knew. He found a four-inch stick lying there by the roots and went inside, remembering that it was the trust company Remy had told him to go and get the brittle.

Outside, Woody and Jessie could hear voices, the second one belonging to a female squirrel with Goodman being the first.

"This is a stick up, doll. Where's the treacle brittle?"

"Right in here."

Without even looking through the door, Woody and Jessie could hear a sound that no one ever wished to hear: a scream and a chomp telling them that Goodman had been eaten alive. The scream had dissipated to the whistling of the female voice.

"Wanna break for lunch?" the female voice asked to thin air.

"No thank you," replied a deep voice. "I just ate."

Woody and Jessie faced each other.

"No what do we do?" the cowboy asked his gal.

Out of nowhere, Molt appeared. Jessie was surprised and relieved with zeal.

"Mr. Molt!" she cried.

" _Uncle_ Molt now. I want to be friends with you."

Jessie turned to Woody, excitement and cheerfulness in her reply.

"Did you hear what he said?!"

"I sure did Jessie. Mr—Uncle Molt, can you help us?"

"Of course, I can. The seeds of our destiny our bound eternally, even if the road is long and dangerous. I can keep ya company and you will keep _me_ company. Now let's go find you a T-Rex for an older brother."

Little did they know about the blue jaybird watching over them from the lowest branch of the tree. This bird in particular was always searching for news, acting as the forest's equivalent of a newspaper hawker. When he saw the three leaving, he shouted to a mother sparrow, who was sitting in a nest with her babies, reacting in surprise when he shouted the recent events right into their ears. The news soon reached Remy, who woke up just in time to hear that Goodman had been eaten alive.

"How can I regret that he is dead?" the rat said to himself. "I can't let those dolls get away. And If I can't have my treacle brittle, those guys are going to make me the laughing stock of the dump."

He walked to his red remote control car which resembled a Bentley.

"Soon, I'll have those toys back, THEN I will make that turncoat Molt write and I'll hang him by his antlers until he becomes bird bate."

The first snow of winter lay just beyond, with a log crossing over a river of ice. The log was hallow as Molt had described it and he went first, sliding across the ice followed by Woody and Jessie who performed a figure eight as they went down. They circled around Molt as he wiped the snow off of his head once he came to the other side of the stream. But before either of them could at least one foot down on the bank, a red car had rolled up with Remy as the driver. His smiling faced looked innocent, but held back his true anger towards the trio.

"Out for a stroll are we?" he asked. "I think you two deserve a ride in my Bentley. It's better than being out in the cold."

Woody and Jessie shivered from a mixture of the cold and Remy's presence.

"We prefer to walk," Woody said trying to be strong.

"And what about your friend Molt? Would he like to join us?"

Before the duo could correct Remy that he was their uncle, Molt thought of a distraction to get Woody and Jessie away from the rat as quickly as possible.

"How about I read your fortune, Remy? It won't take a moment.

Remy clasped his hands together, enjoying himself.

"Why not? I am the only one here who has one."

And Molt tried to go into the same tone and position of his trance from earlier, going onto his knees.

"I see a dog, at dawn she'll rise. At rat, will fall."

And his hands reached for Remy's hands, throwing him over his antlers and to the ground, his skull landing hard on the ice that left a crack. Throwing his cape off, covering Remy entirely, Molt, Woody and Jessie, jumped into the Bentley with the grasshopper throwing his right foot down on the gas pedal and the remote-controlled car drove out into the open reaches of freedom. Still under the cape, Remy woke in time to find that his car was gone, infuriating him even more.

"One more trick from him and I swear to my ancestors that I am going to cut his throat open."


	4. The Moth

Gypsy wasn't really the type of person that corresponded with her name, but she was an aspiring songstress with a voice that did not prove her or anyone else wrong. She could sing soprano, alto and B-flat, limiting herself to operatic tunes and plays. Leaving her fond farewell to her family, the moth had proceeded to travel wherever her dainty legs to her, even through the winter where she came across an upset Bentley lying in a snowdrift. Molt had driven the car too fast in the hast of escaping Remy and when the car swerved on it's right side, all three passengers, thanks to toy cars lacking a seatbelt, were now spiraled across the snow.

By this time, Gypsy had been exhausted. She was too cold to

"if it weren't for the form of the arts," she said to herself. "I would not be able to go on for another miles."

Her despondent head looked over at the three figures, the legs of a grasshopper standing up being the most obvious part of it. Curious, Gypsy walked over to the figures and craned her head down at the solemn faces of Woody and Jessie, who were almost on the brink of frozen tears.

"Can't move…." The cowboy shivered.

Gypsy felt pity for the two.

"I know just how you feel. In all my travels, I have been stranded in the worst places."

Then she came to the grasshopper legs pointing up to the sky.

"And you are?"

"Molt."

The grasshopper dusted the snow off of him and shook the moth's right hand with his left. After some formal introductions, Gypsy aimed her nose to the direction of the northern horizon.

"Come along all of you, success is just around the corner."

The trio, now a quartet, travelled a mile up the frozen stream, seeing no color other than the white of the snow and clouds until they saw something red: a curtain placed alongside two trees and a long board representing a stage. In front of the stage were about three rows of thin circular logs acting as seats. Gypsy approached the stage, occupied by a mantis, a male ladybug, a black widow spider, a rhinoceros beetle, a green caterpillar, twin pillbugs and a walkingstick, and made her voice loud and clear for the following announcement.

"My dear friends! I have just found three new members for our acting group!"

The male ladybug, whose named was Francis, felt usurped and shocked by the doll's size.

"Yikes, they're humongous!"

"They're fantastic!" the twin pillbugs chorused.

"Actually," Woody chuckled nervously. "We weren't intending to be actors, we were just trying to find our way home."

"And we also came to find our friend, Rex, the green dino doll."

The name seemed to ring a hateful bell into the memory of the mantis named Manny.

"Oh, don't even get me started with that clumsy dino! We decided to build one whole show around him. Set during the Jurassic age, he wanted it to be and you want to know what he did next? He ran off."

"It was a long time ago," Gypsy explained.

"Tonight," the walkingstick proclaimed before she could go on. "We preform _The Woodchuck's Revenge._ That's a play with a clearly obvious title."

Gypsy told the plot in her own words, embellishing it with a theatrical tone.

"A sneaky rat closes on the mortgage-"

"What about _The Invisible Dog?_ " asked the caterpillar in a tone of outrage. But Gypsy still went on.

"He cannot pay the rent, so—"

It was the spider's turn to speak.

" _The Last Visible-_ "

And before she could even finish the title, the pillbugs were chorusing with Gypsy.

"'We can't pay the rent! We can't!'"

Unsatisfied, Manny and the others closed the right-side curtain. They were certain that they couldn't do three plays simultaneously before they all collapsed from exhaustion over rehearsal. Finally, it was agreed that _The Last Visible Dog_ would be tonight's performance, much the walkingstick's dismay before being informed that such play would take place tomorrow night. The jaybird came just in time that evening to shout.

"Ladies and gentlemen, P.T. Flea Theatrical Group presents their production of _The Last Visible Dog!_ "

Below his vantage point, a thin branch, the seats were packed with insects and woodland animals from both sides of the stream. This performance, as he had observed was indefinitely sold out. Hearing the applause from an audience worthy of the theatrical group's stature, the pillbugs on each side pushed the curtains back to reveal two cans of Alpo dog food on opposite ends of the stage. Out of the left can came Manny, gazing up at the sky.

"Invisible dog, searching."

Out of the right can came the walkingstick, in the same position as Manny and being cautious not to knock over the can.

"Lurking."

"A dogged search."

"A scene."

"All life is a search."

Both heads came out of the can at the same time.

"Inward."

"Outward."

"Onword searching."

"For truth!"

"Freedom!"

"Beauty!"

"Love!"

With arms raised, the two actors sank back into the cans. No hide or hair of them could be seen by the audience, which left two members confused after three seconds. On the right entrance of the stage, Gypsy pushed Woody and Jessie forward, urging.

"Okay, kids, save the show."

Molt, watching alongside Gypsy, held his right thumb up with a beaming smile that came across his lips.

"We are looking for a Tyranosaurus-rex!" Woody tried to be dramatic.

Jessie's tone of improv was much better.

"And a lady named Little Bo Peep."

"And we are not the only ones who are looking…"

Woody's head turned back over his left shoulder just in time to see Remy a foot behind Gypsy. But Gypsy didn't seem to know better and came to the quick assumption that he was a volunteer. Molt rushed back to the stage as Gypsy brought the rat onto the boards.

"You're on, sweetheart."

Remy's claws reached for Woody, forcing him and Jessie to duck under the right can. The audience saw a different ordeal that was more real than staged.

"Rat-sneak!" they cried as Remy went into the left can. He revealed himself just three seconds later.

"So what if I am?" he asked impolitely. "Have you no honor towards rodents?"

"He is searching…" Manny's head popped behind the right can.

"Leave now," whispered the walkingstick.

But Remy stood his ground.

"When you prick us, do we not bleed?"

"He's stalking."

"He is corrupt!"

This got the crowd to their feet and with angry shouts, they charged forward, carrying Remy off. Gypsy, seeing Molt still cowering behind the stage, flew up to avoid being lynched.

"So much for modern dramas," she muttered.

Flying to a nearby branch, she could see Woody and Jessie leaving the right can and running off, following them to the ground.

"You two were pretty good. You could have a future in the theater and go far."

"We've been far," Woody replied. "And where we'd like to go now is home."

"Can you take us to the toy store please?" Jessie's question was more of a plead.

"It would take more than ten members of my family to carry you there without going in rounds," Gypsy apologized. "But I think I might know someone who can help you. I can take you as far as Piper's cottage. He's got the biggest brain for a bird his size once you get to know him."

And so Gypsy flew seven feet above Woody and Jessie who walked along the ground, still wary that Remy would be coming after them soon. Needless to say it was too late for any of them to realize that Molt was missing. He in fact had taken a different path, a path that he hoped, would be far, far, far away from his former employer as possible.


End file.
